US Household Income, Devil's advocate Options

[Inferia]

So lets play a game here. Lets take the devil's advocate on a situation such as education. I think most of us know where each other stand on situations such as race, immigration, education, etc. The point is to go argue the other side of the point. And I don't mean it in a stupid, sarcastic type of way. It is to really argue the point as if you believe in it, and as if you really mean it, in other words argue it as if you're arguing the other side (the one you would normally be on). The point of this is not to prove one side is more 'right' than the other, it is to create critical thinking for everyone involved. You're on your honors as to how you're going to argue the devil's advocate point.


General statement: This is a plot of median US household income as a function of time from 1965 - 2003. The plot shows that the rate of increase for household income is faster for the higher percentile than the lower percentile.

My position: Yes, this plot shows that the 95th percentile is increase much faster than that of the 10th percentile, it does not show the individual families. It is in essence saying that the people in the 95th percentile are making more money. It doesn't show that people who has had money is getting richer, all the data shows is that if you're going to make money, you're going to make more money if you're in the higher percentile. A household in the 20th percentile in the 1960s could have very well risen to the 95th percentile in the 2000's, and vice versa. In essence people "graduate" into a higher percentile.

[impala454]

it's a little misleading to say the rich get richer and the poor stay poor, which obviously is your point. you're talking about the 95th percentile of people, which is the top 5%. mathematics tells us that the top 5% doesn't have as much of an effect as the remaining 95%. of course that's the way the graph will look.

in the wikipedia article you took the graph from, it shows that the median household income has increased since 31% since 1967. look at the numbers for those percentiles:
20th%: $14,002 - $17,984 (28.4% increase)
50th%: $33,338 - $43,318 (29.9% increase)
80th%: $55,265 - $86,867 (57.2% increase)
95th%: $88,678 - $154,120 (73.8% increase)

so the math is spot on, the increases get higher and higher, the fewer the percentile. this is how it's supposed to work. if the numbers were there for the 99th% it would probably be well over 100% increase in income.

if you look at the data how it matters to your point, you have to look at the differences between the percentiles.

1967:
20th% -> 50th% = 138% increase
50th% -> 80th% = 65.7% increase
80th% -> 95th% = 60.5% increase

2003:
20th% -> 50th% = 140% increase
50th% -> 80th% = 100.5% increase
80th% -> 95th% = 77.4% increase

so if you look at the data properly, you see the poor aren't really getting poorer, and the rich aren't really getting that much richer. it's the folks in the middle (yay!) who are the ones getting richer.